Phillis Wheatley
Phillis Wheatley (* around 1753 probably in the region of Senegambia, West Africa, † December 5, 1784 in Boston ) was the first African American poet whose works were published.
Life and work
Probably born at the Gambia River, it was sold at the age of seven years in slavery. Around 1761 it was purchased in Boston by the tailor John Wheatley as a gift for his wife Susanna. She was named after the ship on which they had been brought to America in the name of Phillis and brought up as a Christian. The Wheatley made sure that the talented girls received a good education, including instruction in Latin, Greek, mythology and history.
Her first poem (On Messrs.. Hussey and Coffin ), she published already in 1767 with thirteen years of appearing in Rhode Iceland Newport Mercury newspaper. Already this first poem is typical of her work, which was based on the neoclassical poetry modeled after Alexander Pope. Many of her poems are Christian and edifying content, many of them suitable to religious celebrities. Wide notoriety she gained in 1771 with an elegy to the late Methodist preacher George Whitefield ( On the Death of Reverend Whitefield ), they probably even had heard preach. The poem was printed not only in Boston, but also in London and made her way across the Atlantic known - where the interest so much directed at least on their skin color as on the literary quality of her poems. So led about Voltaire in 1774 in a letter to Baron de Constant Rebecq Wheatley as counter-evidence for its racist statement to that there is no black poets.
1772 Wheatley tried in vain to find in Boston a publisher who Phillis ' poems would print in book form. Since many of refusals assumed that she could not have written the poems themselves, which Wheatley arranged a survey by a select group of Boston notables, including Thomas Hutchinson, the governor of Massachusetts. While it is not known how this tribunal actually represented - the girl was in fact examined in their scriptures strength and knowledge of classical languages - but they signed her after passing the examination a certificate in which they assured that no on the authorship of Phillis Wheatley doubt exists.
When in spite of this confirmation still found no publisher, Susanna Wheatley threaded over English patrons as Selina, Countess of Huntingdon an implementation of the book project in England. To accompany the campaign in England, Phillis Wheatley traveled to London in the summer of 1773. During her two -month stay, she was served as a curiosity by the literary salons of the aristocracy were interested and met, among others, Benjamin Franklin. Shortly after they had gone back on the return trip to Boston, published Poems on Various Subjects her, Religious and Moral in September of the year the publisher Archibald Bell. Preceded by the band was the above-mentioned certificate.
Shortly after her return to her owner Susanna Wheatley died in Boston, and no later than October of the year Phillis was granted freedom. Was her vormaliger owner John Wheatley an avowed Loyalist, Phillis Wheatley so joined as free blacks now with her poems for gaining strength independence movement, which culminated in the founding of the United States 1776. One of her most famous poems is an ode to the future President George Washington ( To His Excellency General Washington, 1775). Less enthusiastic about their sealing arts was Thomas Jefferson, who was one of its sharpest critics. Hardly treated the poet their own situation. One of the few which refers to slavery, On Being Brought From Africa to America is ( From Africa to America):
' TWAS mercy Brought me from my Pagan land, Taught my benighted soul to understand That there's a God, thatthere 's a Saviour too: Once I redemption neither sought nor knew. Some view our sable race with scornful eye, "Their color is a diabolic that. " Remember, Christians, Negroes, black as Cain, May be refin'd, and join th ' angelic train.
The grace brought ' me forth from heathland, gave my dark soul the mind, that there is a God, a savior of them all together: Once known ' I do not, still looking for ' the rescue jet. Us dark race can be seen full of scorn: " The color is similar to the cube of the demon. " Bear in mind, Christians, Negroes, black as Cain, once white and bright in reih'n Engelszug itself.
1778 she married the free black grocer John Peters, with whom she had two children; both of whom died in infancy. After her husband had left her, she eked out a living as a waitress and depleted rapidly. She died at the age of 31 in the postpartum period, her third child a few hours after her. A second volume of poetry, where she had worked, was never released. From Wheatley's probably much more extensive work only 56 poems and 22 letters have been preserved. Recently, a previously unknown poem from her pen was known in 1998. The manuscript of Ocean was offered by a private provider at the auction house Christie's to auction and was sold for $ 68,500.
Reception
Wheatley's poetry is not very well regarded in modern literary criticism in general, and has often been interpreted as a mere imitation neoclassical style models devoid of any originality. Even critics of postcolonial theoretical background or of the civil rights movement influenced representatives an essentialist " black aesthetic " that strive to create a well as the literary productions of women and / or blacks statement supporting counter- canon of American literature, have been hard done Wheatley for such clamp project because them their compliance with the contemporary conventions and modes of thought rather than pandering to the whites appeared - her poems appear to them as a " product of a white ghost, " the poet had therefore sold their souls.
This view has been challenged in the last years by well-meaning critics who quite certified Wheatley's poems subversive potential, especially in their intentional influence the reader in the question of the legality of slavery and the dignity of blacks. Its most prominent advocate is Henry Louis Gates, Jr., who wrote in his introduction to a 1988 edition of Wheatley's works concerned, they have established the tradition of African American literature " by hand " by the publication of Poems on Various Subjects. Meanwhile, the research assumes that the first printed work of an African American not of Wheatley comes, but by Jupiter Hammon, whose poem already in 1761 appeared An Evening Thought as a leaflet.